By Robb Fenton

It’s both a busy and exciting time for everyone in the Lloydminster Bobcats organization.
As the 2010 training camp opened this past weekend, head coach and general manager Brian Curran has his work cut out for him in selecting this year’s roster, but he’s happy with what he saw from his players.
“What I have here right now, we’re bigger, we have some good speed and we have a great bunch of kids with good character. I really like that and one of the nicest things is we’ve gone through a couple things we want to use this year and they caught on real quick. We’re way ahead of where we were last year,” Curran said.
While the camp was smaller in numbers, Curran noted that there are some players who will be attending Western Hockey League training camps and may end up in a Bobcats uniform in a few weeks.
“We have a couple of defencemen that are at WHL camps, so we have some guys that aren’t here. We’re missing about three guys that are going to WHL camps. You always hope they do make it, but if they don’t make it, then we will be much better. We also have a goaltender in the WHL that we don’t know his direction. We hope he makes it, but if he doesn’t we’d like to have that veteran goaltender and that will help us a lot,” Curran explained. “We have to wait like anyone else, but what we do have here, I like where we’re at. Adding a few more players to it will make us a very strong team.”
One of the biggest positives Curran took from the weekend was how his returning players were ready to get back on the ice and show him the strides they’ve made since the end of last season.
With about nine players who were on the roster last season, Curran is looking forward to his veteran grouping being a big key to the 2011-2012 team.
“The nice thing about it is the guys I had last year came back with a really good attitude and came back in shape and are ready to go, that’s good to see. There has been no issue of conflict whatsoever on the ice amongst players or anything like that. We were physical in the game Saturday, the guys are feeling the bumps and bruises, but it’s better to start feeling them now,” he said. “What we have right now we have to make sure they are following what we’re trying to do and I think they are. We’d like some more scoring, but right now we have a team that I like that is going to work extremely hard. Every player we have has worked hard.”
Curran hasn’t put a time table in place of when he wants his roster finalized, but said they will continue on towards the season making decisions when they feel they have to.
“I’m not making any decisions yet really. There’s a few players maybe by Monday, but not much. We have that rookie game against Camrose, we’ll play most of the guys then and we’ll make our decisions day-by-day,” he said of how the roster will be trimmed down. “We might keep players around for the whole week. Hopefully by the end of the week we’ll have most of our team picked.”
With a mostly rookie exhibition game scheduled for Wednesday in Camrose and three home games in a row to follow, Curran will get a good look at each player and what they can do for his team.
“I have a tonne of work, I’m excited, but I’m not ready to get going right now. We still have a lot of work to do,” Curran admitted. “We have to get the right players, we have to find out what we’re getting back from the W, that’s a waiting game and then we have to see how a couple of trades I made, was it a good move or was it just a toss of a player and money away. I’m hoping that’s not the case.”
The ‘Cats welcome the Fort McMurray Oil Barons to town Thursday and Friday for the first of three exhibition games in a row at the Civic Centr